This relates to micro-blogs and, in particular, to methods, apparatus and software for analyzing the content of micro-blogs.
In the history of the internet, there has never before been an open, searchable means of short-form communication. Predecessors to micro-blogging include: instant messaging, chat rooms, and bulletin boards. However, short form communication in these contexts was always two-way (i.e., one was saying something in response to something else or about a pre-determined topic). Micro-blogging, in contrast, is a one-to-many short form of social communication that is often outside of two-way back-and-forth conversation or topic-centric threaded discussion. Micro-blogging enables people to communicate via “lifestreaming.” This involves sharing thoughts, opinions and observations that are correlated to their real-life experience and conveyed in an online setting.
Additionally, micro-blogging exists in a completely open environment where anyone can discover it. The openness of the data set fosters the possibility of exponential volume growth in conversations about areas of social importance. This “viral” nature of micro-blogging is further promoted by social networking and social sharing features that are integrated into most micro-blogging platforms. These tools make it possible for users to designate which other users' content they'd like to receive (in, the case of Twitter, this process is called “following.”) Other features on micro-blogging platforms encourage users to share desirable content, expand on it, and redistribute messages in a way that makes them far-reaching.
The viral nature of the data set is the central reason why micro-blogging generated information anomalies can have such a great degree of influence over the online information landscape. Any one piece of micro-blogging content has the capacity to “go viral” and, as a result, affect society just as a mainstream news story would. Furthermore, micro-blogging is an authentic means of self-expression that exists outside of the context of a survey or an interview. This makes an individual's postings, and what they share akin to a continuous consumer survey. Additionally, micro-blogging equips all users with the capacity to be “citizen journalists,” such that they can be the first to report events happening around them via their smart-phones or other devices linked to the internet. In summary, Micro-blogging stands as an unparalleled intersection of consumer research and the emerging news-cycle and is, therefore, a uniquely valuable data-set for financial services and other professional end users.
The online social media sphere has achieved critical mass and reached mainstream acceptance. According to the Web analyst Comscore, 64 percent, or 122 million individuals of the 192 million unique US Internet users in February 2009, visited one or more social networking sites, in the process reading, publishing, or responding to posts. In only 12 months, the casual micro-blogging site Twitter saw the number of its users increase by 1085%. The social web, which began as a fad for college students, is now ubiquitous with use spanning all age groups. Demonstrating this is the fact that 38% of Facebook users are over the age of 35, the average blogger is 37, and the median age of Twitter users is 31.
Within this social media landscape, micro-blogging is one of the most prominent and fastest growing user behaviors. While Twitter is the international leader, there are over 111 micro-blogging sites across the world in many different languages. These services include Google Buzz, Tumblr and Plurk. Along with these niche social media platforms, large social networking websites like Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn have their own micro-blogging features that are often called “status updates.” Posting thoughts and updates about one's life is becoming central to the culture of these larger social networking platforms.
In addition to being mainstream and far-reaching, Twitter and micro-blogging services are also being leveraged in ways that have a dramatic effect on society. For example, Twitter is said to have been a major contributor to the Iranian election uprising. In this case, the service enabled the public to share thoughts with each other in real-time and gather around a central cause. This puts forth further proof that Twitter and other micro-blogging sites are tools with enormous importance and societal power.
Social media outlets are often the first public places where this information is published. The exploding lexicon of virtual “watercooler” talk occurring on the myriad of online user-generated destinations, such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, has created an entirely new and relevant user feedback loop containing real-time sentiment and activity trends of the general public. These noticeable trends occur in the online publishing collective well-before the related stories or events are covered and reported by traditional off-line and online news sources. Below are several recent examples of this phenomenon:                When Apple CEO and Founder Steve Jobs' obituary was mistakenly published online, the resulting online buzz is reported to have adversely affected Apple's stock price.        When a major earthquake hit China's Sichuan Province on May 12, 2008, Twitter users in China reported the earthquake as they were experiencing it in real-time. The US Geological Survey reported the quake on their website a full three minutes after Twitter, and both the BBC and the Chinese government learned about the quake through their monitoring of Twitter approximately five to seven minutes after the quake commenced.        When the US Airways plane landed in the Hudson, Twitter users were the first to buzz about the accident, beating the New York Times' online reporting of the accident by a reported 20 minutes.        
A system capable of sifting through, organizing, delivering and presenting this enormous and growing amount of user-published information as it unfolds online in real time would be extremely advantageous across many spectrums. Investors, for example, could benefit tremendously. Markets move in real-time, all the time. In the Digital Age, access to immediate and actionable investment information can be the difference between success and failure. It is more often people's reactions to news stories and events that profoundly impact financial markets, rather than the events themselves.